The Edinburgh festival is to stage three "monumental" theatre shows, including a vast multimedia production of Macbeth, in an agricultural showground outside the city after securing record levels of funding.

In a deliberate shift from its traditional theatres in central Edinburgh, the 65th festival will build an intricate but temporary "pop-up" theatre complex at Ingliston's Royal Highland showground to stage three shows back-to-back.

The productions, including a "surreal" German-English adaptation of Pygmalion, Meine faire Dame – ein Sprachlabor, and Les Naufragés de Fol Espoir (Aurores), an epic French anti-imperialist adventure set at sea, have been funded after the international festival increased its donations and sponsorship by more than 15%.

The festival, which starts on 9 August and will encompass productions from 47 countries, is expected to break through the £10m income barrier for the first time, making it the largest since its foundation in 1947. Its growth, after seeing ticket sales decline last year, is linked directly to a partnership with the London 2012 Olympics through the Cultural Olympiad arts festival and a year of culture being promoted for 2012 by the Creative Scotland arts agency and the Scottish government.

The Macbeth at Ingliston, 2008: Macbeth by the director Grzegorz Jarzyna, is a "visceral" version, first staged in a former munitions warehouse in Warsaw, which is set in the Middle East. It features an "industrial-strength laundry in which the machines churn to try to get out that damned spot," Jonathan Mills, the festival's director, said.

Other prominent and substantial productions will include a mass participation evening light show to mark the Olympics on Arthur's Seat, the extinct volcanic peak in central Edinburgh – NVA's Speed of Light, when thousands of volunteers will dress in illuminated costumes and run around its side.

There will also be a "claustrophobic" production by the Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki of Waiting for Orestes: Elektra; a modern reworking of Gulliver's Travels from Romania, productions from the Julliard School in New York and a "wonderfully sassy, sexy and sultry" production of Tatyana by the Deborah Colker dance company.

Along with dance works involving native Australian artists with the Leigh Warrens and Dancers, and a "mesmerising" production from India by the Aditi Mangaldas dance company, Mills also highlighted a rare show by the world's oldest orchestral tradition from the imperial court of Japan. He said the single performance of Gagaku, an orchestral form dating to the fifth century, given by the Imperial Court Music and Dance of Japan, involved "music of such sublime tranquility that time literally stands still".

Unusually for Mills, this year's event does not have an overt central geographical or cultural theme. "What we trying to suggest by this programme is the values of peacefulness and values of shared culture are the values that underpin both the Olympic games and the Edinburgh festival itself," he said.

Mills told the Guardian he expected similar levels of funding to continue for the next three years until 2014, when he will direct his last Edinburgh festival and step down from the post after twice extending his contract beyond its original five-year term.

The director, regarded as one of the first senior arts administrators to see the benefits of the 2012 games for the arts, said he saw the Olympics as "an opportunity to make a compelling narrative to governments local and national and to stakeholders about the years between 2012 and 2014. Let's make sure we're in the position to do something very special".

He said the 2014 festival, which would be staged at the height of the Scottish independence referendum campaign expected to take place in the autumn of that year, would be a spectacular event, but added that its precise themes would remain secret until then.

He said he had no anxieties that that year's festival – one of several major cultural and sporting events taking place in Scotland in 2014, including the Commonwealth games in Glasgow – would be harnessed to support the independence campaign.

"I'm confident that when you hear of it, you will agree with me that actually there's something very big and one can celebrate and have a conversation with, in that year of all years," he said. "Which isn't to do with nationalism, not to do with questions of the Commonwealth but something else culturally."

The Scottish government has increased its arts funding, through its innovative Expo fund to promote new Scottish productions, for this year after winning a landslide election victory last year. "There has been no pressure on us from the Scottish government," he said. "We're clearly a non-political organisation and they respect and understand our mission."

Tickets for the 2012 Edinburgh international festival go on sale to the general public on Saturday 24 March